37 responses to “Thursday, 9/15/11, Public Square”

China is shifting some of its massive foreign holdings into gold and away from the US dollar, undermining the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency, accoding to a recently released WikiLeaks cable.

“They [the US and Europe] intend to weaken gold’s function as an international reserve currency. They don’t want to see other countries turning to gold reserves instead of the US dollar or Euro,” stated the 2009 cable, quoting Chinese Radio International. “China’s increased gold reserves will thus act as a model and lead other countries towards reserving more gold.”

Pennsylvania, like 47 other states is winner-take-all for electoral votes. The GOP controlled legislature is seeking to break up the electoral votes by district. If what is being proposed had been in place in 2008 President Obama would have only won 11 of the 21 possible votes.

Change proposed for state’s electoral vote process

HARRISBURG — A new proposal is pushing the often-forgotten Electoral College into the spotlight as Pennsylvania officials ponder the state’s role in next year’s presidential race.

My little sister is in Motegi, Japan, with her work. She says an earthquake shook her out of bed. She knows earthquakes as she has lived all over the world, including many years in California, and she said this one seemed ‘of note.’ She said it made her go to the hallway from her 12th floor hotel room quickly. Scary.

When the U.S. Census Bureau released the latest poverty statistics this week, the news was predictably bleak—or at least the news that people were given. But there was a little something the major media omitted from their coverage.

“Here’s a startling figure: The typical white family has 20 times the wealth of the median black family. That’s the largest gap in 25 years. The recession widened the racial wealth gap, but experts say it’s also due to deeply ingrained differences in things such as inheritance, home ownership, taxes and even expectations.”

For the last few weeks I’ve been under constant attack. My opponents would have you believe that if I’m elected, you’ll be stripped of your Social Security benefits and will be scrounging for food in dumpsters with all the desperation of a feral cat.

Of course, that’s true. But what they don’t tell you is what I’d replace Social Security with: an amazing new program I like to call PerryCare™.

Under PerryCare™, you’ll receive all the food, clothing and shelter you need, and it won’t cost a dime in taxes. How is that possible? Simple: you’ll be praying for all those things.

As a PerryCare™ recipient, each week you’ll receive in your email box a PerryCare™ PrayerMail™, giving you an easy-to-recite prayer for the bread, milk, cat food or whatever else you need to survive. It’s like a Groupon from God.

PerryCare™ is more than a replacement for that infernal Ponzi scheme that has bamboozled Americans with regular monthly checks for 75 years. It is part of my larger plan to return prayer to its rightful place in American life. I get down on my knees every night and I promise you, if I am elected your President, I will bring this entire country to its knees.

I expect that some of my opponents will laugh at my plan, especially that lawn gnome Ron Paul and Michele “Crazy Eyes” Bachmann. Fine, let them laugh! Laughter is the best medicine. And if I am elected, there will be no other medicine.

That brings me to my PerryCare™ medical plan, which will replace Medicare once I consign that Ponzi scheme to the electric chair of history. I don’t have enough time to go into the whole plan right now, but here it is in two words: single prayer.

“…you’ll receive all the food, clothing and shelter you need”…in prison, cuz that’s the way we do it in Texas. And before long, you won’t even have to worry about those things, because you’ll have been capitalized (as in capital punishment). Better dead than hungry, nekkid and homeless.😉

I am deeply offended by a political party that expects pledges be signed and honored! I’ve come to expect that sort of silliness from republicans because it seems an oath to uphold the United States Constitution needs to be clarified for the children they elect.

Now there is “Contract For The American Dream,” which is drawing support from democrats.

If democrats can’t elect people who already understand the points of that contract, if they have to lower themselves to treating elected officials like children, they need to face the facts that they’re failing as a political party, and as voters! Have they truly become no different than republicans?

Some days I think my association with you who blog here has spoiled me into thinking all liberals / progressives / democrats are clear-thinking, independent individuals. Are any of you offended by a pledge not so cleverly disguised as a take-off of the Gingrich Contract with America? Are you equally offended that we need to write new rules that seem to expect us to behave as a collective?

I’m sure someone here will be unhappy with me for saying this, but I’m not all that crazy about reciting the Pledge of Allegiance or playing the National Anthem ad nauseum. I won’t go into my reasons, but I do have them. Love of country includes pride, and right now I’m not all that proud of some of the things we’ve done and continue to do.

The thing is, pledging is nothing more than signing a paper or saying a bunch of words that, once done, the meaning is left behind in the dust. Christians are baptized as a pledge to their faith in Jesus and God, and look at what goes on after that.

Words should have power. We’ve pretty much obliterated that by all the broken pledges and lies.

The average SAT reading score dipped to 497 this year, according to the College Board—down three points from last year and 33 points since 1972. The College Board spun the decline as the result of a growing pool of test takers: “Anytime you expand the number of students taking the SAT and expand it the way that we have—into communities that have not necessarily been part of the college-going culture—it’s not surprising to see a decline of a few points.” The average math score was 514, down one point from last year but up five points since 1972.

A University of Minnesota bioethicist is offering $1,000 for medical proof that a woman’s daughter suffered mental retardation from the vaccine for human papillomavirus virus, a story that was told by Rep. Michele Bachmann after Monday’s debate.

I’ve heard stories that the HPV virus has caused problems in some who have been vaccinated. Mental retardation was only one. Death was another.

My daughters’ doctor told them that if they’ve been in a monogamous relationship for several years and have had yearly pap smears, there was no need for them to have the vaccine.

I got in an argument with one of those daughters yesterday. Seems some congressman in Florida wants to pull a Rick Perry and make it law that all girls aged 14(?) and up are vaccinated. Frankly, I’m against this, but daughter was for it. Okay, she can make sure her daughters are vaccinated when the time comes. She brought up the current list of vaccines to support her stand and the fact that currently the HPV virus is not covered by insurance. I brought up that most of the current vaccines are for what once were epidemics that killed millions of people. Diptheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio. Measles were added because of the danger to pregnant women and chance of deformities in their fetuses and also the chance of blindess. I don’t know why they decided to add mumps and chicken pox. Easier to control, I guess. Not sure that’s all right. I’d also like to know how much Merck is paying this Florida congressman, since we’ve finally learned what they paid Perry.

“I think it was last weekend I was watching C-SPAN, and I saw Vice President Dick Cheney and he was being asked questions about a whole host of issues–following 9/11, the affairs in various countries in the world. And I listened to him speak and said whether you agree or disagree with him, this a man of wisdom and judgment, and he could have been president of the United States,” Romney told the crowd, per NBC’s Garrett Haake. “That’s the kind of person I’d like to have–a person of wisdom and judgment.”

Romney’s answer was in response to a question from the audience about whether he would pick a “tea party person” as his running mate. But as NBC notes, Romney dodged the question, saying he wants to pick someone who is qualified to be president, which elicited his mention of Cheney.

Romney’s answer is sure to play well with establishment Republicans, with whom Cheney remains extremely popular. The larger issue is whether Romney is angling for an endorsement from the former VP.

Cheney has been cagey about whether he’ll endorse in the 2012 primary, but he’s been openly critical of Rick Perry, suggesting his rhetoric on Social Security and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has been over the top.

Taking the GOP’s anti-tax ideology to its logical conclusion, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) introduced today his own “American Jobs Act” — giving his bill the same name as President Obama’s plan — which would completely eliminate corporate income taxes. Gohmert claims this will create jobs:

It is a very simple bill, which will eliminate the corporate tax which serves as a tariff that our American companies pay on goods they produce here in America. This bill will actually create jobs in America.

The two-page bill changes the tax code to replace any mention of the current “35 percent” tax rate with “0 percent.” Corporations are already sitting on trillions in cash, so cutting their taxes would likely do very little to help the economy, but would balloon the deficit by depriving the government of about $300 billions in revenues annually. As the CBO found, cutting taxes on businesses “typically does not create an incentive for them to spend more on labor or to produce more, because production depends on the ability to sell output.”

Why don’t we build houses for the CEOs for free, while we’re at it? We could decorate and furnish it for them too. Maybe let their maids and cooks and gardeners and nannies work for free. Why should the privileged have to lift a finger or pay a penny?

But why stop there? Didn’t the serfs provide food for the masters? Didn’t the serfs provide everything? We’re falling down on the job already. And while we’re at it, let’s include the BoD members of the corporations, too. And all the people on Wall Street.

The comments at the link above re: Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) are FUN! Of course Perry came up since they were already discussing idiots from Texas (Gohmert). There are many good ones, but I brought this one back to share:

“Sorry folks, we’ve accidentally allowed political siblings to mate down here for far too long. Could someone send us some Finns or a Swede? Anything?”

I jumped into a short discussion on FB after reading a comment by an old H.S. classmate, who I’m sure is rabidly Republican. He’s a businessman, and, fnord, I’m sure your hubby knows him well. He has the same initials as Jesus Christ, and I once asked him if he walked on water. LOL Anyway, something was posted about Rick Perry, and I, feeling snarky, came back with “Governor Hair Products.” Then someone else mentioned Perry’s statements on tougher border control, using everything under the sun, and I innocently asked how these two gentlemen felt that fit with his law to allow children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition at public colleges. Don’t think anyone’s answered that one yet.

9 out of 10 of these poorest states are in the Red Deep South. Come to think of it, these are also the states that have alot of thos God-given natural disasters that Michele Bachmann and Televangelist Pat Robertson keeps saying God is sending to wake us up.

Do you think God is tryign to tell these Red Deep Southern states that they need to take care of their own citizens?